Austrian NeuroCloud

Austrian NeuroCloud (ANC)

Optimisation of cognitive neuroscience

The cognitive neurosciences in Austria already have an internationally competitive research infrastructure, which includes large-scale equipment worth more than 5 million euros at the Science and Technology Hub Salzburg alone and represents the starting point for making a significant contribution to the overall Austrian publication output. Despite these successful achievements, the potential of the Austrian cognitive neurosciences has not yet been fully exploited.

Project description

Aims of the initiative

The Austrian NeuroCloud (ANC) project has been designed to connect all large-scale cognitive neuroscience infrastructure in Austria at a central hub in Salzburg and to create a freely accessible environment for the standardised storage, management, and analysis of research data. The primary focus here is to apply the latest standards in order to organise and describe research data uniformly by using the Brain Imaging Data Structure (BIDS, Gorgolewski et al., 2016). In addition, measures are being taken to improve research data sharing and sustainable use. The so-called FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship, also known as FAIR principles, are prioritised here (Wilkinson et al., 2016). These principles are applied to both the research data and to their associated metadata; the latter is highly relevant, as it improves both the discoverability of research outputs of any kind and their semantic interoperability and reusability. On the one hand, these measures described above are being implemented to increase the efficiency, transparency, and reproducibility of cognitive neuroscience data on a national level. On the other hand, they should also strengthen the connection to European initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), thus increasing the international visibility of Austria as a centre of knowledge.

Work package for the initiative

Data management
Data classification
Data privacy, security, and autonomy
Data analysis
ANC datasets
ANC research data life cycle

Current project status

By the halfway point of the project (duration: 03/2020 - 09/2024), a prototype system for storing and managing BIDS-formatted cognitive neuroscience data had been established. This is currently being evaluated by migrating historical data. It was also decided that the experimental data classification would be performed by using Hierarchical Event Descriptors (HED; Robbins, Truong, Appelhoff, Delorme, & Makeig, 21). The usability of HED for fMRI data is currently being examined in a collaboration with the University of San Diego. The cognitive classification of the data will be carried out by using a cognitive ontology; a theoretical concept for this has already been developed, and it is currently being modelled in a collaboration with the Universities of Bolzano and Twente. The PLUS standard and the GDPR guidelines were referenced, but this did not further clarify the legal follow-up questions. For this reason, the topic is currently being examined more deeply in collaboration with the consortium of our partner project, the Digital Neuroscience Initiative (DNI). Regarding the planned standardised data analysis methods, the preprocessing and analysis routines are currently being implemented in a user-friendly environment and tested on the basis of pre-piloted data from the ANC datasets, among others. A prototypical research data life cycle is being developed in parallel to the work steps mentioned above.

Potential synergies with other higher education institutions

Once an intelligent specialisation step has been taken, the project will enable interdisciplinary cooperation between the identified PLUS fields of expertise. For example, a direct link must be created between the cognitive neurosciences and information technologies in order to transfer knowledge to other scientific fields; in turn, this knowledge can be used to store and manage research data by using digital repositories. As a result, this opens up opportunities for jointly promoting innovation and setting new technical standards in Salzburg as a centre of expertise. Furthermore, in view of the rapid advances in digitalisation, there are many starting points for projects to efficiently exploit the potential of Big Data, especially by involving computer science researchers. Due to the fact that the legal status of neurocognitive research data has not yet been fully clarified, which currently seem to be suspended between the GDPR and the Research Organisation Act (in German: Forschungsorganisationsgesetz or FOG), clear synergies with the legal sciences also clearly exist. This is of immense relevance both with regard to the long-term storage and subsequent use of research data, as well as to current efforts to link national research data repositories to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Regarding the urgently needed cognitive classification of the stored data, questions of science theory related to ontology have also emerged, i.e. in the overlapping zone between the cognitive sciences and analytic philosophy, promoting synergies between the life and social sciences.